This summer, Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival for his new film "Thief Family," which was introduced to China two months after its release in Japan, and we were able to walk into theaters and see the masterpiece.
Friends who are familiar with Japanese movies must be able to count the family treasures of Kore-eda's "Family Story", the early "Nobody Knows" is adapted from the real case of abandoning his own son, which makes people think about the responsibility of parenthood; the later "Walking Non-Stop" "Deeper Than the Sea" from the perspective of a middle-aged but failed to realize his dream of a fallen son, faintly presents the bond between parents and children; in the meantime, "Like Father Like Son" takes two families holding the wrong child as the starting point, exploring whether the definition of "family" is blood or time to coexist with each other The 2015 release of "Sea Street Diaries" is adapted from the manga of the same name, moving the stage background to the small town of Kamakura, far away from the metropolis, with four half-sisters as the protagonists, presenting the daily scenery of the new family in the change of scenery throughout the year.
People who have seen this movie probably rarely dislike it, in addition to the warm and moving plot, the wind objects of the four seasons of Kamakura are also interspersed like lyric poems interspersed in the scenes of the character activities: the teenagers in the spring ride the young girls on the horse riding through the long cherry blossom trails; the lone boats on the summer sea float in the night and medium fireworks; the hydrangea flowers in the rainy season are dotted with paths, and the mother and daughter who are good after quarrels climb the rainy staircase to the temple to sweep the tomb... The flow of seasons is more reflected in the manga as the plot develops.
A richer comic plot than the movie
Due to the limited space of the film as a carrier, the director made a drastic deletion of the comic content, cutting out some characters and plots, and focusing on the relationship construction of the four sisters. After watching the movie and then reading the comic, you can get a more detailed story line, a fuller character image, a more comprehensive interpersonal network and a more three-dimensional emotional feeling.
For example, the title of the first volume of the manga, "Cicada Shi Yu の止む頃", is taken from the subtitle of the first story and can be translated as "When the Cicadas Stop" The Japanese word for "cicada rain" refers to the dense sound of cicadas in the hot summer like rain lines, and there is no such description in Chinese, which may be literally understood as the rain during the cicada season.
In the comic, the four sisters meet for the first time at their father's funeral, because they are separated from each other for more than ten years, the second kanai and the old three thousand jia have no feelings in the face of their father's spiritual position - when their parents divorced, they were still young, especially Chika, and the memory of their father is very thin; and Kano also has no good feelings for this man who abandoned his wife for a third party. My father's third son, the sun, was weak and weak, and he only knew how to cry at the funeral, and he did not fulfill the responsibility of the bereaved owner at all, but the 13-year-old Suzu took up the heavy responsibility. Before the three sisters left, Suzu took the family portrait that her father had treasured to send them farewell, and in the mountain scenery similar to Kamakura, the eldest sister said to Suzu, "You have worked hard, you have always been taking care of your father"; in the face of this tenderness, Suzu cried in the overwhelming sound of cicadas. The comic uses compartments, narration, and large areas of white space to condense time in just a few minutes, and the long-term grievances and fatigue in Suzu's heart pour down at this moment, and the crying is so fierce that even the cicadas cannot hide it - it may be speculated that the "cicadas stop" in the title implies the meaning of "stop crying and start a new life". In contrast, the bell in the movie only silently sheds a few tears.
(Screenshot of the first episode)
The second story, Sasuke's Fox, tells the story of Kana's boyfriend Tomoki. Suzu had just moved to Kamakura, chika took her around, and the two ran into Tomoki near Sasuke Inari Shrine and talked to a strange boy secretly, suspecting that he had an ulterior secret, but not daring to tell Kano easily. Soon after, Tomojo appears at the bank where Kana works, and the two accidentally expose each other's lies, sit together again and chat, and the relationship has come to an end. Peng Zhang talked about the discovery of his mother's cheating when he was a child, and the man who sneakily blackmailed him was the object of his mother's affair. The first volume does not deal too much with this embarrassing past, but in the subsequent series, the hypocritical family and ugliness of the rich young master Pengzhang will surface.
The character of Tomojo is not the first time to appear in Akio Yoshida's manga, as early as a few years before the "Sea Street Diaries" began to be serialized, another "Lover's Kiss" revolved around six high school students, including Tomosaki, telling a few contradictory but pure romances. Among them, although Pengzhang is handsome and well-born, he has a lingering gray past: his parents' relationship is not good, and his mother's attachment to him exceeds that of ordinary mother-son love, almost crazy; in order to stay away from this twisted relationship, he angrily leaves home, lives in his aunt's apartment, and also "degenerates" from a well-rounded excellent student to a notorious bad teenager.
Akio Yoshida once said that she initially wanted to unfold the plot of "Sea Street Diary" from the perspective of Tomoaki Fujii in this manga, but after trying for a long time, but the more she drew, the darker it became, probably because of the character's personality and experience, she could not find a better entry point; later, in the small talk with the editor, she was inspired to create the role of her sister (that is, Kana), who worked at the bank, and then, other characters emerged, and the plot was smoothly rolled out.
Cover of Lover's Kiss
The third story, "The Ghost of the Second Order Hall", tells the story of Suzu's participation in the Pre-selection of the Kamakura Youth Football Team after transferring schools, and getting to know Kazata, Shoshi, Yuya, and others. Among them, the soccer captain Yu is also a very important character, and he is also the object of Suzu's crush later. This chapter is witnessed by Suzu when he took care of his father through Yuya's suffering of amputation, and people can't help but follow them into the hearts of patients, to feel the pain and injustice that cannot be understood by healthy people. By stewing a pot of mild, non-greasy Japanese chicken soup, the reader naturally develops empathy for putting oneself in the shoes of the reader.
The title "Nijido" is where Hiroya lived, and from the school there is a passing route to "OtamiYa", which was the place where Prince Gora was imprisoned and killed by the Ashikaga clan during the Kamakura period, and legend has it that the ghost of Prince Gora haunts here at night. When Kazeta was a child, he had seen a noh drama based on this model near the Great Tower Palace, and the image of the artist who wore a scythe in his head and held a scythe appeared in his mind many times since then, associated with the amputated Yuya.
Prince Gora in the drama
As such, each title in the comic is properly related to the development of the story, and all the details are not available in the film. In addition, the hospital and clinic where I am lucky to work, the bar and mysterious drinking buddy that Kana loves to go to, the broken toe of Chika's store manager boyfriend and the touching story of the "Himalayan Crane", the teachers and friends of Suzu's school and their family background... The various characters are connected to each other in unexpected relationships, creating a colorful picture of the town. At the same time, relatives of Suzu's birth mother appeared, and the four sisters went to Kanazawa to visit the kimono house run by the family. Spring, summer, autumn and winter are constantly rotating, the love affair of several sisters has developed their own, and Suzu is about to leave Kamakura to attend high school in Shizuoka.
Akio Yoshida's small deeds
Akio Yoshida, the manga author of Hydra Street Diary, was born in 1956 and graduated from Musashino University of Fine Arts with a bachelor's degree, and once dreamed of becoming an art director and also set foot in the advertising world, but accidentally entered the manga industry.
Before graduating from college, she had already received an offer from a leading company in China that imported CG painting, and worked odd jobs there, but because a tennis girl with a slightly exposed underwear stole the limelight of the CG work strongly recommended by the president at an important design competition, which indirectly led to the company's competition failure and bankruptcy. At that time, although she had not yet drawn a manga, she also began to try to get close to the style of girl comics. Later, one day, she submitted her short works to a manga contest that had recently been cut at the time, and did not want to win an award for it, and soon debuted as a manga artist in "Elementary School Hall" (the name of a comprehensive publishing house in Japan, which includes manga magazines such as "Shonen Sunday" and "Girl Comic").
When she first debuted, Akio Yoshida knew nothing about the manga industry, and the editor told her to "bring name" (i.e., ネーム, manga term, referring to storyboard scripts), and she thought she was talking about seals. Due to the low salary at the beginning, she could only sell 3,500 yen per page of manga, which made her feel a huge gap in the advertising industry before, thinking that this line was simply squeezed. Although I like to draw, I can't support myself by painting and I can't lift my strength. But there are also many happy moments when becoming a cartoonist, such as when looking at your own work, all the plots can develop in the direction you want; now looking back at your previous works "YASHA", "BANANA FISH", etc., you will also shamelessly self-indulge: "This comic is so funny!" Who is the author? Ah, it was me! ”
Today, Yoshida Akio is in his sixties, has been debuting for more than forty years, and has painted many long and short works, many of which have been adapted into TV series, movies or animations, with themes ranging from mafia, street gangsters and mysterious drug disputes, to the pure love affairs of young men and women on campus, and many early works also involved topics such as homosexuality, transvestism, and customs. In the six short stories of "Lover's Kiss" (ラヴァーズ・キス), which is composed of six short stories, there is a sentence: "Some ambiguous feelings can only be defined by liking", in her eyes, emotions have no gender, no right or wrong, meet, like, there is no other way.
Whether from the storyline or line strokes, Akio Yoshida does not belong to the traditional sense of the girl manga, nor can it be classified as a juvenile manga or a youth manga author, her portrayal of the emotions of the characters is very delicate, and the plot development is often touching; from the sharpness and oppression of youth to the current dilution and peace, she herself must have experienced the stage changes in her life. The Sea Street Diaries is the latest feature-length serial in her list of works, and the third time after Lover's Kiss and Sleeping Eve that the story is set in Kamakura. Since August 2006, the manga has been serialized irregularly in the Elementary School Hall's Monthly Flowers, and so far, eight volumes have been published in the single edition, and the first seven volumes of the Chinese edition have been introduced, and will be officially released around the National Day this year.
Chinese edition of "Diary of Haijie", Yazhong Culture/Zhejiang Literature and Art Publishing House
This work won the Manga Division Excellence Award at the Agency for Cultural Affairs Media Arts Festival, the 2013 Manga Grand Prize for The Manga Academy and Elementary School, and was brought to the big screen by director Hirokazu Kore-eda in 2015 to be known to more people.
Kamakura, the stage of the manga, is the place where Akio Yoshida lived as a child. It was still the 1960s, kamakura was relatively backward compared to the illuminated metropolis of Tokyo, and there were no 24-hour convenience stores, and in the evening, the sun set, the light quickly disappeared, and the surrounding area quickly fell into darkness; the fear of being surrounded by dark nights grew up to become a nostalgic emotion, and the strong contrast between light and darkness also left a mark on Yoshida Akio's mind, becoming a motivation for creating "Sea Street Diary".
Kore-eda also mentioned at the beginning of his licensed adaptation of the manga: "Although I was rarely touched by the film adaptation of the manga, when I read the first volume, I had the idea of making it into a movie myself. Today, I am fully savoring two kinds of pleasures, one is to be able to meet this four sisters story interspersed with light and darkness, and the other is to make this work come true. ”
The film further handles the contradictions in the comics, in addition to the light and darkness in human nature, it is also scheduled from the color and light and shade of the picture, the fireworks blooming on the sea on summer nights, the yin and plume beauty in the wooden buildings, the incense flowers in the courtyard, and the layers of forests under the warm sun in autumn...
The film begins with one funeral and ends with another, and the plot of the comic continues to evolve. Love, family affection, friendship, complex emotions are flipped and entangled between things, and the characters are gradually growing and maturing in the flow of personnel. After seeing the cherry blossoms for a season, when the cicadas stop, they will turn from autumn to winter.